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The
Library’s holiday card this year featured George Washington’s
broadside proclaiming the first national day of Thanksgiving.
The Proclamation, presented to the Library by Dr. Marshall
Coyne (H’90) in 1994 as the Georgetown University Libraries’ official
two millionth volume, is one of only six recorded copies. It
was printed in New York, probably by Childs and Swain, in late
September or early October 1789. Surviving untrimmed copies
such as this one indicate that it was printed on a typical
newspaper-type stock, the sheets measuring approximately 20x16
inches.
While George Washington proclaimed the first Thanksgiving
Day in the year of Georgetown University’s founding,
the day was not fixed as the fourth Thursday of November until
the nineteenth century.
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